The Angel's Plan
by Ethylene
Summary: So they'd go down fighting as hard as they could. Even when Sam would inevitably say yes in Detroit and Dean would wear himself into the ground saying no, but continue to pray to a God he loses all faith in, that things will be okay. That Sammy will be okay. Still they'd fight. - Pre fifth series finale. The Winchester have been anticipated since the dawn of their race.


A really long time ago, before recorded mortal history back when the epitome of the entire human race were a couple of stray blind fish swimming around in the toxic slag that fed and nourished them, the rising star of their generation was about to fling itself gasping for air onto the shore at the feet of a small gathering crowd.

The larger beings, the spectators to the first tentative steps of the human race, if you will, were in complete awe. They were shifting in the brisk cold that morning which, incidentally, would mimic another, billions of years later that would take place on a small plot of land to become a graveyard outside of Lawrence, Kansas. Then, too, the angels would stand silent and anxious, at attention.

Most could do nothing but stare at the aggregate of all their fathers hard work in a sopping mess in the sand, longed to touch it, to have their share of this grand event. For lying at their feet in a shivering huddled mass, in all its glory, was the future.

The future of the entire world, which, granted, wasn't much in the grand scheme of things but would later come to be one of the most complex and innovative systems in the entire universe home to the most emotionally advanced sentient beings ever created at the hands of God, rested on the barely formed shoulder of this new underdeveloped creature. And while it wasn't entirely clear what God's vision was involving this new born human, it was His will, and so it shall be done.

"Careful, Castiel" A brother beside him put his hand on Cas's shoulder as if to reassure him while still holding him back "This fish," His brother let out a small huffy laugh and smiled quietly down at it in the sand, still not looking at Cas. "We have big plans for this fish. Big plans,"

He sighed quietly gripping his shoulder tight once more before dropping his hand. "Come my brothers and sisters, we have things to prepare for," Cas was left staring at the fish and so missed the pointed looks shot over his hunched shoulders. They all left, one by one, with the soft ruffle of feathers and wind on his cheek until Castiel was the last one on that cold grey morning, still watching the future struggle in the damp before him.

Only now does he understand why no angel would look directly at him leaving the beach that day.

Only now does he understand why his mission was kept from him so long.

Because if he had known of the vision seen, planned and acted upon on that day above him while he stood alone, surrounded by his kind, he would have rebelled against the angels millenia ago.

It was not a very clear vision, he learned years after the fact. A little blurry, some of the facts were left out, several key pieces (and by pieces they mean actual human beings) didn't come into focus when they first understood what they saw, when they first understood the true importance of this hardy race and the crucial difference between good and evil and how easy it is to mistake one for the other.

But it was clear enough for the angels to start doing everything in their power to control the outcome in their future, to start controlling the variables and making informed decisions that were based on this perfect vision, prophesied straight from the mouth of whomever chose to represent Him that morning. Later, that bleak day would be looked back on as the day the Winchesters were born, or the idea of them, really.

Oh, of course for a long time, when humanity was still dragging its feet, you know picking up speed in the first million years or so, there wasn't much for the angels to do. Follow the plan mostly, that stretched all the way out to roughly around the birth of Christ. Every once in a while some uppity monkey would start making eyes at an (old) ancestor of Sam and Dean's and some lesser angel or a cupid would be forced to step in. But for the most part, for all of the high stakes, it was leisure work.

When Jesus got there, Heaven got pretty busy with all of these new arrivals and what not, but the angels who were in on the (vague) plan never lost sight of the most important bloodline in human history.

It really started to get down to the wire in the 1500's back when kings and queens had total impunity in Europe. From the way things were looking (which wasn't good) the public wouldn't put up with totalitarian governments for much longer and democracy was looking to make a comeback. So they started fine tuning the breeding of these two fabled brothers they'd heard so much about and got in on the last of the royal blood while they still could.

Over the years the vision of the brothers and the great fight between good and evil that would never be acknowledged by anyone who mattered in the world of humans but would be looked up to (and then harshly suppressed when it became the spark that lit the fire of rebellion) in heaven and by every angel who had ever seen a human, would become more of a fable, a "legend has it…". The more angels watched the human race, the less the vision of the brothers became a prophecy and the more it became a story to remind the angels why this feeble dogged race was worth it, a light at the end of a tunnel.

Until it was just the angels _essential_ to the story, who would set it up to play out, who were even visiting earth anymore and even then only for, business. Their business was in creating the last of the Winchester bloodline, creating a DNA code so airtight, tainted blood wouldn't be worthy of getting within 10 feet of them. They were cast with making sure years of royal blood and holy blood and traditional rites of passage and balanced mental facilities and peak physical conditions from every race beneficial to the end result emitted something as close to perfect as they could get.

And it worked, in a sense. They bred and crossbred the best of the best to get the absolute perfect and the got two brothers in peak physical condition with the right background and the right future as far as heaven was concerned. All that was left to do was knock over the firsts domino.

They were so focused on creating this product, this ideal that they didn't understand they might get anything less than a perfect result, but Dean and Sam are only human after all and so, as perfect a vessel, an empty shell they might make, there are these men who live inside who were supposed to thrive and they had hopes and dreams and drive and untarnished souls before they became a synthetic product.

It could have even been by chance, a complete accident, that anyone might have ended up in the same situation and come out (or not) for better or for worse than the boys. But it wasn't, they were even told, on multiple occasions that, to some degree, they had been planned and all of those angels talking about living up to your destiny and spewing some spiel about 'no free will', had controlled their lives from the moment humans came to exist.

Cas, the rebel ally, was the exception and not the rule, and that's why he loved them, Dean and Sam, but mostly Dean. He loves Dean because he is a miserable show dog, roused and tied down, handicapped and angry. His body is not his own, he's broken and still he rises still he believes in what he knows, daddy's little soldier, rebelling. Sometimes Dean catches the look Cas gets on his face when he gets angry. Out of the corner of his eye, it almost looks like admiration, but by the time he turns to look at him his face holds the same pitied mix of wonder and confusion it always has.

The angels put them in place to give them optimal training for the final battle that lay ahead of them whether they liked it or not. They were made hunters to be given a fighting chance at defeating a power a million times bigger than they and maybe going down swinging, best case scenario. They put them in the addictively satisfying line of a serial killer, justified it with 'saving lives' after cross-breeding generations of familial blood and expect them to follow orders. It's what they were created to do, after all.

Dean doesn't know any of this specifically, bigger picture stuff wasn't something he'd put on his resume. He understands enough to know the angels are dicks, but past that all he can catch are fleeting glimpses, corners, pieces of a giant puzzle. He sees the startlingly perfect parallels between divine dysfunctional family dynamics and some closer to home, but never dwells on fate or destiny long enough to get angry. The bastards are suspicious enough already.

Maybe it was the corrupt blood or maybe, on some level, they understood, but the Winchesters did not know how to say yes. They were dying either way.

So they'd go down fighting as hard as they could. Even when Sam would inevitably say yes in Detroit and Dean would wear himself into the ground saying no, but continue to pray to a God he loses all faith in, that things will be okay. That Sammy will be okay. Still they'd fight. Until then, they've got time, months, but less every time they turn around.

He may be damaged on the inside but hey at least he's pretty and Dean, though he has not gone as far as to realize it, acknowledges his bare understanding on the nights when he stays up a little later drinking a beer quietly in the kitchenette of their current motel and wishes with all of his tiny, fragile, faithfully beating heart that Cas had smashed his heel into the head of that fish the moment it flung itself gasping onto the new shore

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**I'm sorry if it's rough, I wrote it really fast. It's before the apocalypse so Sam and Dean aren't just angsty about each other. I didn't mean to put any Destiel in there but that fucking ship just worms it's way into everything.**

**I can't get better if I don't get reviews so even if you hate it or it was so mediocre you've forgotten what it's about already, drop me a line**


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